The present invention relates to a dust-collecting device for a vacuum cleaner used in an upright type vacuum cleaner and to an upright type vacuum cleaner employing the same.
There are conventionally known vacuum cleaners, especially upright type vacuum cleaners which do not employ disposable dust-collecting paper packages but are provided with a dust-collecting device comprising a cylindrical filter within a dust-collecting case which is fitted to a suction path of a main body of the vacuum cleaner in a freely attachable and detachable manner to accumulate dust which has been filtered through the filter within the dust-collecting case wherein the accumulated dust can be discharged by opening a bottom lid. Such a dust-collecting device is economical than compared to disposable paper packages since it can be semi-permanently used by performing maintenance of the filter.
However, it is the case with such a conventional dust-collecting device for a vacuum cleaner that an increase in the amount of dust accumulated within the dust-collecting case results in compression of dust which is adhered to an inner wall of the dust-collecting case, so that dust cannot be discharged by its own weight through the discharge outlet by simply opening the bottom lid of the dust-collecting case. Thus, dust need to be scraped out by hand so that this procedure is quite annoying and also unhygienic.
Further, since dust (minute dust) which is adhering to the filter needs to be removed regularly by detaching the filter, this removal of adhering dust might be troublesome and in case such removing processes are neglected, plugging owing to dust adhering to the filter might occur so that dust-collecting efficiency is degraded.
It should be noted that a known type of dust-collecting device employing no paper package or filter which is apt to be plugged is a dust-collecting device of cyclone separating type wherein dust is simply accumulated in the dust-collecting case after separation in such a dust-collecting device of cyclone separating type to thereby present a poor dust compression rate so that the dust-collecting case is filled up with dust shortly.
The present invention has thus been made with the aim to solve such problems, and it is an object thereof to enable easy discharge of dust which has been compressed and accumulated in a dust-collecting case.
It is another object thereof to enable easy removal of dust which has adhered to a filter to thereby prevent degradation of dust-collecting efficiency owing to plugging.
It is still another object thereof to improve a compression rate of dust accumulated in the dust-collecting case and to achieve improvements in collecting amount with respect to dust-collecting capacity.